by Tom Watson
Sabal is greeting Georgina Hyde like she’s a long-lost daughter. They’ve kept in contact? Georgina opens her arms and then bows, all smiles, and leads them both away, staying close to Sabal.
‘Owen? Got a sec? As you’re just standing there.’
The voice is coming from behind him. He takes a second to put some sort of professional smile on his face.
‘Charlotte! How are you? I was just contemplating the future of democracy.’
Charlotte Cook. Lobby journalist for one of the many papers who loathe Owen, his party and his leader, but Owen suspects Charlotte is not as loyal to the party in power as her bosses believe. She keeps her reports factual, calls for comment before she runs something. Also a very careful gossip. She is wearing TV make-up, which makes her look a decade younger than she is under TV lights, but disconcertingly ‘done’ in the greyish natural light of the hall.
‘Yeah, like you care. And don’t try that democracy nonsense, either. One – we both know it’s empty cant, and two – Philip Bickford is our knight in pound-shop armour today.’ They are in danger of causing an obstruction. Charlotte sighs noisily at a middle-aged couple who brush her shoulder. ‘Off for one of your walks? I’ll keep you company to the edge of the estate.’
‘Fine.’ They walk down the steps together and the ceiling rises above them. Owen notices she’s wearing trainers. A lot of women in parliament do this, switching into heels for any time the cameras are nearby, keeping their Converse and Nikes handy for the rest of the time when they are wandering the endless corridors, chasing division bells, bills, stories. ‘And why would a lowly backbencher like me deserve such an honour?’
‘I must have started drinking earlier than usual today,’ she replies. Owen’s never seen her drink anything stronger than mineral water. ‘I’m giving you a heads-up. And you’ll owe me one. The Labour Party leadership are launching an anti-bullying investigation.’
‘OK.’
She shoots him a side-eye. ‘The word is a slightly skeezy freelancer called Edward Barns has whipped the editors of the Chronicle into a frenzy with the prospect of a damning exposé. Your leadership wants to get out in front of the story.’
Owen feels a tight knot of anger in his stomach. A government with unprecedented powers, a country reeling and wounded by the social and economic shock of the century and all his party can do is disappear mournfully up its own arse. Whatever it is, publish and be damned. Trust the people to work out what matters.
They go out through the doors and into the spring air, damp and chill. Three steps out onto the tarmac, she puts a hand on his arm.
‘2009, Owen,’ Charlotte says, looking up at him with her heavily mascaraed eyes. ‘It’s Jay Dewan’s case they are investigating.’
That hits him like a punch in the gut. He should have known. So that’s why Jay’s father is in the building.
‘Why? After all this time?’
Damn. He normally has a good poker face but Charlotte is watching him, sees the shock. He wonders what she remembers about those times.
‘It’s a good story, Owen. The former housemates. Jay makes a great tragic hero, and now you and Georgina are on one side of the house, eager to govern, and Phil is on the other, rising through the ranks. Human interest and a whiff of dark deeds. Of course the Chronicle is eager.’
‘There were no dark deeds,’ Owen says, as firmly as he can.
She watches him, professional cynic, but then so is he. ‘You might need a better line than that, Owen.’
Now they are on the tarmac forecourt, the echoing space of the ancient hall is replaced by traffic noise, the smell of the caramel-nut vendors, the chants of the protestors. The sky is overcast.
‘Thanks, Charlotte.’
‘Pick up when I call you, Owen.’
Is that a threat, or a promise she’ll tell him more when she can? Probably a bit of both, knowing journalists, and Charlotte. She releases his arm and turns back into the hall. Owen leaves through the turnstile and heads straight across Westminster Bridge. For the first time in a year he doesn’t take note of the number of tourists, tally them with the month before and pray for continued growth. He walks towards County Hall and the Southbank, head down.
2009. The Jay Dewan case.
The past is coming for him.
Chapter 3
Phil doesn’t look at his secretary as he passes through the outer office; she half gets up before she catches Ian’s ‘not now’ signal, and sinks back miserably into her seat as Phil shoulders his way into his own office. Toby bloody Dale is sitting in his chair. Behind his desk.
‘Get out of my chair, Toby.’
He does.
‘What in God’s name happened? Did you have a stroke? Did your brain literally start bleeding in there? That was the most humiliating thirty seconds of TV I’ve seen in my entire life.’
Phil walks past him, throws his folder on the coffee table then drops into his chair. The office, with its high narrow windows and tatty panelling, feels like a prison today. There is a letter on his letterhead lying on the blotter in front of his keyboard.
‘What’s this?’
Toby is typing something on his phone, he finishes then shoves the handset into his pocket. ‘It’s your apology, of course. And you should be bloody grateful it’s not your resignation. Did you hear your dear old friend Georgina Hyde on the Today programme this morning? Slagging us off again on behalf of all the key workers – you’d think they’d be happy to be in work without another pay rise – and then, just when the press are getting bored rehashing her thought-for-the-fucking-day-touchy-feely-bollocks you hand them a gift-wrapped cherry for a second bite.’
Phil reads the letter. It’s snivelling. Abject. He’s exhausted. ‘I’m not signing this.’
‘You are. Or the PM will sack you himself.’
Phil looks up. Toby is the sort of person who wears a Union Jack waistcoat at fundraising dinners, can’t stop banging on about the Great British spirit but despises from the depths of his soul the fifty per cent of the British people who think he’s full of shit and his plans for the future wishful bollocks. They lack pluck, apparently.
‘No, he won’t,’ Phil says. ‘Not now, anyway. It’ll make him look panicked. Just like this letter does. It was a mistake. It was corrected. You’re the one turning a five-minute story into a whole news cycle, Toby.’
Toby goes purple. Patches of it in his cheeks. A miracle he’s survived the virus so far with blood pressure like this.
‘Listen to me, Philip. You’ve managed not to screw things up till now, but I know at heart you’re not just a remoaner, you’re a socialist and I can’t believe we were stupid enough to let you into government. If I scratch you, you’ll bleed red.’
‘We all bleed red, Toby.’
That doesn’t help. The vein in his forehead is throbbing.
‘You are hanging on by a thread, a thread. We need a united party, and the PM doesn’t trust you. Neither does the Secretary of State and neither do I! If I go back and tell the PM you won’t sign this, you won’t be sacked tomorrow or next week. First we’ll have a good trawl through the archives for every fuck-up, every sin being laid at the health department’s door and then work out how every one of them was your fault, then we’ll throw you out. Sign this letter or I will personally see to it you are the sin-eater for the whole fucking department.’
Philip has to take a moment now. This was always the danger. What had made him valuable to the Cameron government and useful to this one – his past as an activist on the other side, his working-class roots – also made him vulnerable when someone was looking for a scapegoat and God knows, they need a farm full of them now. He looks back down at the letter. Maybe it’s not so bad. Toby is breathing hard, sensing a win.
A knock and the door opens.
‘What?’ Toby shouts over his shoulder.
Ian comes into the room and stands between them, cradling his phone in two hands.
‘You have to see this,�
�� he says to Phil, then to Toby. ‘The Minister is trending all over Twitter.’
‘No sodding surprise there,’ Toby spits.
‘No. Not the fuck-up. The thing you said in the lobby. It’s all over. The Times is on the phone, and Ian Dunt’s just retweeted the clip. He says “Fuck yeah.”’
Again Philip tries to remember what he actually said.
Ian’s voice rises with enthusiasm. ‘Telegraph says Minister’s off-the-cuff defence of parliament strikes chord with patriotic voters. The original tweet’s already got two thousand retweets. You’re a meme, Phil.’
Phil picks the letter of apology off the table and hands it to Toby, unsigned. Toby folds it and tucks it into his inside pocket, his jaw working like he’s sucking an arsenic-coated lemon.
‘Minister, the chief executive of MenCap is here, and what shall I say to The Times?’
Philip nods. ‘Show him in, Ian. And tell The Times, like all my government colleagues, I’m proud of our parliamentary traditions and will always speak in their defence.’ He looks back at the crimson special advisor. ‘Goodbye, Toby.’
Toby can’t get any words out through his spasming lips. Who is having a stroke now? It’s over. He leaves and Philip has a whole ten seconds to enjoy the moment before his next meeting begins.
Owen is lucky to have an office in Portcullis House. Not many backbenchers do, but he’s been helpful on a couple of key votes, does his committee work diligently and this was his reward from a grateful whip – a room of his own where he can get to the Chamber for votes in an easy four minutes. His executive secretary Debra and researcher Pam share the room next door with staff of the chair of another committee. No outward-facing window onto the Thames, but it’s a step up from his first office where the cleaning staff were still shifting out their mops and buckets when he turned up.
Twenty-five minutes after he left for his walk, Owen is back at his desk working through the emails and trying to ignore the flood of notifications on WhatsApp. Everyone has an emoji reaction to Phil’s speech in the lobby they feel the need to share. Eye-rolls, fingers down the throat. The leader has tweeted a ‘Though I don’t often agree with the Right Honourable Member, on this occasion … ’ Bit pompous.
Pam and Debra have triaged the emails, sent standard replies to the form letters (‘press here to email your MP!’) and individually tailored replies to the ones who bother putting their opinion in their own words. And a lot of the constituency casework he won’t even see – Angie in the constituency office will deal with it and send him a summary at the end of the week.
He still has a mound of desperate appeals to deal with, though. He rolls his shoulders and cracks on.
The shredded social safety net continues to let people drop through the holes. The hurried legislation to deal with the virus, and the knock-on effects from shuttered offices, courts and schools, has left bureaucratic chaos in its wake. The stunted system is more capricious, labyrinthine, cruel than ever. An MP on his own has little power, but it’s amazing what a letter to the council or the bank can do if it comes on official House of Commons stationery. And a reputation for being a good constituency MP? A two per cent extra personal vote at the general election.
Pam comes in and offers to do a coffee run, then returns and talks him through local press campaigns, an update from the food banks in his constituency and he checks through and signs off on her draft responses and tweets.
‘And I got your message about the data review question for the Secretary of State for Health. I’ve sent the follow-up.’
‘Thanks.’ Owen is already reading the next email. ‘Any other business?’
‘Yes,’ Pam says slowly. ‘The Leader’s Office called. They want you to meet a lawyer called Chloe Lefiami at six. I was ordered to put it in your diary. Anything I should know?’
Owen looks at her. She looks so bloody young sometimes. Did he look like that? Back then? He remembers thinking he knew it all, and his anger when his elders wouldn’t listen and came over all world-weary at him. Now he’s doing it. He resists the temptation to ask Pam to define ‘should’ in this context.
‘Have you heard the name Jay Dewan?’
Head on one side. A frown. ‘Vaguely.’
‘Google it. If anyone asks, I look back with great fondness on our friendship and will do anything I can to assist Ms Lefiami in her enquiries. That’s it.’
She gets up to go.
‘Pam?’
‘Yes, boss?’
‘Be careful on the phone and in the bars. The whisper is there’s a story coming about Jay, and me. That the investigation has been launched as a response.’
She nods and he wonders if she realises just how bad this could be. Every MP has some crap printed about them, but this could be a lot worse than that. A lot worse.
‘Anything in particular I should be on the lookout for?’
He breathes out slowly. He’s been going over it in his head as he strode along the river with his head down. ‘Yeah. Anything about me being a bully,’ he pauses. ‘Or violent. The working-class thug dog whistles.’
Her eyes widen and her breath catches, but she doesn’t say anything, just nods and retreats from the room.
Six o’clock comes round fast. The coffee is cold but untouched, a sad skin on its surface, when Pam knocks and ushers Chloe Lefiami into the room.
Owen gets out from behind his desk, smooths his tie and shows Chloe towards the tight coffee table and armchair set up that look like they were nicked from the nearest Travelodge reception area. Lefiami is older than he first thought, seeing her across Westminster Hall.
Chloe takes a seat and pulls out a yellow legal pad from her briefcase.
‘Mr McKenna. Thank you for seeing me so quickly.’ As if he had any choice in the matter. She’s calm, efficient. ‘Have the Leader’s Office team explained to you what this is about?’
Owen crosses his legs, worries that it will make him look defensive, but uncrossing them will make him look shifty and nervous. He goes with it and folds his arms too.
‘No. One of the lobby journalists told me an investigation had been launched into the Jay Dewan case to get in front of a hit piece in the Chronicle.’
A flicker of amusement or mild contempt crosses her face. He can’t tell which it is.
‘I’m not sure about the hit piece, but your leader has asked me to run a formal investigation into what happened to Jay Dewan and any other historic accusations of bullying and intimidation that come to light as a result.’
She reaches into the briefcase again and produces a card. Passes it over to Owen. He has to lean forward to take it and finds himself, elbows on his knees, sitting forward and staring at it.
‘You’re a QC?’
‘Are you surprised that I’m Queen’s Counsel, or that the Leader of the Opposition’s office is concerned enough to appoint a Queen’s Counsel?’
He puts the card on the table and leans back again. Looks straight at her. Lets himself be assessed for flickers of racism.
‘Bit of both. You look too young to be a QC and I imagined LOTO would have asked one of their own many, many lawyers to run the investigation.’
Chloe writes something down and Owen fights the impulse to ask what it is. She uses an ordinary pen. A plastic Fineliner. He thought all QCs got a Montblanc fountain pen with the wig.
‘So, Mr McKenna, could you tell me how you came to share a house with Jay Dewan?’
He sees it. The traffic-clogged street on the borders of Lambeth between Elephant and Castle and the Imperial War Museum. A stumble from the Kennington Tandoori and the Dog House pub. He can smell the diesel in the air, the fat and spiced temptations of the chicken shops. Then the house itself. A Victorian three-storey with tall windows, a broken mosaic path and a high hedge. The long shabby back garden which backed onto someone else’s back garden, full of foxes and lost children’s toys.
Chloe is waiting.
‘Georgina Hyde – Maxwell, she was then – found the ho
use through friends of her mum and dad.’ Though Georgina would call them Mother and Father. ‘The owners were academics who had gone to teach at Yale for a year. She and Jay were at university together. They knew Philip Bickford from Oxford. I knew Phil from when we were both on sabbatical running Labour Students a few years before.’
‘You weren’t at Oxford?’
Owen feels himself bristle. ‘I was at Manchester. You?’
Now she looks up at him and flashes a quick smile. ‘Sussex.’
He relaxes a little.
‘And your job at this point, Mr McKenna? When you were sharing the house?’
Hours under strip lighting in Charlotte Street open-plan offices, staring at focus group reports and polling data, making weekly PowerPoint presentations of local by-election results, pulling quotes from the emails of Constituency Labour Party chairs and their volunteers. Following up donor leads, harassing CLPs for donor leads. Trying to build a war chest without selling his soul. Any more of his soul.
‘I was Head of Field Operations at Labour Party HQ.’
‘And Jay was a junior advisor to the Treasury team?’
‘Yes.’
‘Important job in the middle of the financial crisis.’
Owen resists the temptation to repeat ‘junior’. It was a big job for someone Jay’s age, even if most of his work was admin. Oh, and obsessing about getting Alistair’s message out, trying to manage the story of the relationship – fissured and fracturing – between Number 10 and Number 11. Jay had been right in the middle of things, though. In Downing Street. He couldn’t help reminding his housemates of that, and however much they had taken the piss out of him as a tea boy, they couldn’t help resenting it. A big job. Too big. Too close to the sun. The gravity and pressure of the space he occupied was crushing.
‘And Philip Bickford?’